Transform Digital Conference 08-05-2014 broadband, technology, fibre, digital

1. LINX in five slides
A presentation to the
INCA Transform Digital conference
John Souter
Chief Executive Officer
The London Internet Exchange
May 2014

2. LINX Mission and Ethos
• To facilitate Internet
interconnection,
especially through
public peering
• To represent the
interests of our
members in matters of
public policy
As a neutral, mutually
owned membership
association
• Mutual = owned & operated for the members we serve
• Single stakeholder
• Completely open membership
• Only technical rules (for network hygiene)

3. Peering in one slide
Transit
• Network simply
buys Internet
access from an
upstream network
•  Simple &
straightforward
•  All your eggs
are in the same
basket
•  All packets
carried are on a
meter £££
Private peering
• One-to-one
connection with
another network
•  Usually
settlement-free
•  Doesn’t scale
well
(40k networks)
•  Most networks
won’t peer with
you
(big boys club)
Public peering
• One-to-many
connection with
other networks
•  Usually
settlement-free
•  Scales well
•  Open to all
•  Lots of benefits
•  Big networks
still won’t peer
with you

4. Rationale for peering?
Peering offers many benefits:
• More efficient routing for ISPs
–Enables latency sensitive services (e.g. VOIP)
• Saves money
–Lower cost to end users and/or more profit
• Gives ISPs & content providers more
control
–Better services to end users
–Lower dependency on things they can’t control

5. Which organisations peer at LINX?
• 65 of the top 100 global networks
• Almost all UK ISPs
–BT, BSkyB, VirginMedia, TalkTalk, the mobile networks…
• Content provider networks
–BBC, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter…
• Content delivery networks
–Akamai, BitGravity, Edgecast, Limelight, …
• Many of the world’s largest access networks
–AboveNet, DT, Level3, NTT, Telefonica, XO, …
• Education and Research
–Eduserve, JANET, NORDUnet, TENET
• And many more, including some surprising ones…

6. LINX membership reach
~520 network operators
~60 countries
>80% of global routing
table
>4Tb/sec of peak traffic

7. OK, I cheated 

8. LINX regional peering initiative
• LINX has been very successful in London
–Realised that we inhibited regional peering in rest of the UK
–That realisation ⇒ do something about it!
• With the full support of our members
• Regional peering initiative was born in late 2011
–1st
regional exchange opened in Manchester in 2012
–2nd
exchange opened in Edinburgh in late 2013
–3rd
should be in Cardiff in mid-2014
–Now exploring whether we can open more exchanges in
Northern Ireland and in the regions of England
• Key factor will be support from a local community
of interest

9. Questions?
• Website:
–https://www.linx.net
• Contact:
–Sales@linx.net
–Joinhelp@linx.net
–Member-relations@linx.net
–+44 1733 20 77 00

10. Questions?
• Website:
–https://www.linx.net
• Contact:
–Sales@linx.net
–Joinhelp@linx.net
–Member-relations@linx.net
–+44 1733 20 77 00